


How am I supposed to know?

by JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Bitty has things to say, Bitty has thoughts, M/M, Spoilers, response to year 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-08 23:49:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19878115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle/pseuds/JustLookFrightenedAndScuttle
Summary: Based onCoach III.





	How am I supposed to know?

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [Coach III](http://checkpleasecomic.com/comic/4-12-01).

Bitty knew his ears were burning when he sat to take off his skates and Coach was congratulating Murray on a hard-fought battle and all that.

It wasn’t a hard-fought battle, not until the third, anyway, when the Wellies had been able to make it close, after Bitty pulled himself together and let his anger take over from his fear.

“You know he makes decisions like a coach’s kid,” Murray said. “One of the reasons me and Hall had him on a line with Jack freshman year.”

Sure. That was it. Bitty wasn’t sure Murray had even known his father was a football coach until Coach spent fifteen minutes bending Murray’s ear about the similarities between football and hockey. 

Bitty sighed as he put the soakers on his blades. Murray was probably just being nice, buttering up his captain’s father. Bitty had never talked about Coach with his hockey coaches, but it probably hadn’t escaped their notice that he was in his fourth year and this was the first time Coach showed up.

And Murray talking about Jack like that, like of course Coach would know who he was talking about … Of course Coach knew Hall and Murray knew he and Jack were together. Pretty much the whole world – the whole hockey world, at least – knew that.

“Ready?” Bitty said, coming up behind his father.

But Coach would not give it a rest. Not when he stopped at the Wellie alumni display, not at the restaurant where they had dinner, not in the car. “Your friend Jack.” Right.

A series of images came unbidden.

Jack in his graduation gown, reaching to cradle Bitty’s face in his hands; Jack holding him close in the bed of his daddy’s truck while the fireworks burst in the sky; Jack sweeping him off his feet and carrying him to bed; Jack on the porch of the Haus in the middle of the night in the rain; Jack leaning down from the height of his skates to kiss Bitty at center ice … Friends. They had been friends, yes, and they still were, but they were so much more.

“He’s not my friend,” Bitty finally said.

“Come on,” Coach said. “You’re getting snippy because –”

Snippy?

Bitty didn’t let him finish.

“If you don’t like us together, then just say it!” Bitty said, knowing he was raising his voice but not caring to do anything about it. “If you don’t support it, just say it!”

That was enough to crack Coach’s calm facade, enough to make him at least respond, to argue that he flew all the way to Massachusetts to watch Bitty, that he was trying to act like Bitty and Jack being together was no big deal, that he didn’t know what to do when they found out from the kiss on TV, that Bitty was confusing and Coach didn’t know what to do with him.

Bitty cursed the tears that were in his eyes because how dare Coach make him feel like a child? How dare he make this Bitty’s fault?

“I want you to tell me I’m not messed up,” Bitty said, willing himself not to sob. “Please.”

Because Bitty knew Coach had thought there was something wrong with him, with the skating and the baking and not playing football. Coach never had to say it, exactly. It was more in the way he left Bitty to his mother, the way he didn’t brag on Bitty the way he did his football boys.

Great. Now Coach was looking at him like he was baffled.

“You’ve never been messed up,” Coach was saying. “I never thought that. And you and Jack being together … That don’t make you messed up. You know that.”

Coach reached over and put his hand on Bitty’s shoulder. Bitty knew the gesture was supposed to be comforting. And yeah, Bitty did know that being with Jack didn’t make him messed up. But how was he supposed to know what his daddy thought? When Coach never told him?


End file.
